July 18, 2009

I'd like to draw reader's attention to The Sports Exchange which is a new social network for punters of all persuasions. There's some good discussion going on and perhaps some momentum gathering, it's worth a go. Particularly as there's a good post on the same subject as my previous blog entry - here. This is imo, the right way to go about things. The betting community is the market, and we do have a lot of power, it's harnessing it that's difficult - and that is what needs to happen for things to change. I've just signed up.

Talking of social networks, you can now follow me on twitter, if you haven't joined twitter yet and can't see the use in 140 character 'status updates', let me say that till you use it, it's difficult to know just how useful it is. Those of you with facebook profiles will know about status updates, but on twitter there is none of the politics that go along with them. No unwritten rules about who you follow, or who can see your profile... It's pure information, some of it is tedious, but some of it is genuinely brilliant.

By following who you want to, you effectively build your own feed of information from people you personally find interesting. There more 'interesting' people you follow, the more useful stuff comes out of it - I've learnt about stuff I'd never have known about had I not joined.

There's the usual mix of attention seekers (celebrities included) and those that use the service the way it was designed to be used. These are easily spotted, though if I'm honest, I quite enjoy following some of the obvious show offs.

If there's a problem I encounter with twitter from a betting perspective, it's that it's quite difficult to find genuine punters who aren't selling a system, or marketing something else. I find I'm following fewer bettors, and more sports people. Maybe we can change that a bit. Join up, add me on and say hello. Feel free to pilfer the list of people I follow.

June 16, 2008

I'm sure many users of betting exchanges are familiar with the term "free money" by now. Well, new-ish (they've been running for a few months now) website Predictify.com, is giving away small amounts of cash depending on the quality of your answers to the questions posted on their site.

Basically, it's cash for predictions, but it's not quite as simple as that. Here's a quick breakdown on how you can make some money.

When you visit the site you will see many questions asking for your predictions. Most of these will not have a 'pot' and therefore you won't earn anything from answering these questions. However, you still need to answer them, and fast, because the quality or your response to these pot-less questions will determine your expertise rating on the site. The higher your rating, the more you stand to earn when answering the money questions.

Expertise level doesn't just rely upon getting it right either, you need to answer the questions early, you get more points the fewer people have responded before you. When you see a new question, answer it quickly. It's quite a clever way to keep you coming back and checking the site regularly. You can also ask questions of your own, which is interesting and brings me to my next point..

"Prediction" is a hot topic at the moment. It's cropping up all over the place. Prediction markets are becoming quite the buzz phrase at the moment. MidasOracle chronicles their rise brilliantly, while bestseller The Black Swan, discusses prediction in depth, tackling our inability to predict and the many fallacy's we suffer from. I'll leave these fallacy's for further discussion at a later date, but it's my opinion that we have massive problems predicting anything.

Asking questions on predictify is certainly interesting and a lot of fun, but the answers you receive are very reliant on how you frame the question. Asking a negative question or a positive one will skew the results alone.

As a gambler / trader, I'm taking particular interest in this area at the moment, it's raised many a question about how we as humans see things, question things or are biased and prone to fallacy. What processes am I going through when I make a judgement on something for example.

Most casual gamblers and traders will actively seek to predict, completely unaware of the inherent problems residing in their own psychology. Engaging in the act of prediction alone can mess up your answer.

I trade and win, because of poor predictions, and this is not just the odd one or two people guessing wrong, it's whole crowds, entire markets of people, being skewed by one another and the media. Massive groups of people do get things wrong, and they do it time and again. Markets are rarely in an efficient state, for the most part they are simply an efficient representation of human inefficiency. Fallacy and bias depicted in chart form.

I'm not trying to turn people off Predictify, it's great fun and I'm currently really enjoying seeing the distribution of the answers to some of my questions and others. I certainly wouldn't base any judgements on the answers though. Traders and gamblers are very much better suited to approaching the markets they trade with an attitude of scepticism, and a firm belief in the old saying, "anything can happen", because literally anything can. 99.9% of "anything" in this case, is surely beyond the imagination of even the expert level predictors on Predictify or any other "prediction market".

March 27, 2007

A punter is taking Betfair to court because they didn't settle his bets fast enough! He'd run out of funds in his account and needed the Grand National market settled quickly in order to back a horse he'd had his eye on. You can see what happens next.. Market not settled - No money - Horse goes on to win at huge odds! Of course, he says he was going to back it and we believe him. And oh yeah, he could have deposited more money (takes 5 seconds to do) to put the bet on, but he didn't. The full story is here.

March 21, 2007

Just added an interesting new feature to the blog, find it somewhere in my left column - position undecided yet. Basically, it allows me to update the world on my activities as I do them and when I want to. Whats the point then ? To be honest I'm not entirely sure yet, I think it'll become obvious as I use it. Initial thoughts are it allows me to update the blog much more often - posts on twitter are limited to the length of a text message... think nano blog entries. It also lets people know I'm still alive.. some of the features of twitter allow you to link up to friends who can also display the group messages each is posting - If you join twitter I think each of our messages shows up in the box on the blog. Handy for letting others know what I'm betting on and what they are up to and fun too.

I'm gonna send out some invites to those that have linked here, please let me know if you want to join up and definitely post up a "badge" to your own sites too. We can get an impression what each others betting activities - amongst other things ! Twitter.com